碩士 / 國立臺北護理健康大學 / 聽語障礙科學研究所 / 99 / Objective: The aims of this study were to assess the effects of hearing aid fitting on tinnitus in patients with hearing loss. Recent studies in animal models of neural plasticity revealed the possibility of using amplification to reverse the central auditory plasticity changes and to decrease the symptoms of tinnitus. This study also probed into relating factors and predicting variables of these effects.
Methods: VAS and THI tinnitus questionnaires were employed to evaluate tinnitus severity before and after hearing aid fitting. VAS questionnaires were administered to 83 patients, which contains 25 patients received both VAS and THI questionnaires. T-test was used to test the differences of pre- and post- fitting VAS and THI scores. Correlation analysis was also performed for factors including age, gender, PTA of better ear, types of audiogram, tinnitus duration, pre-fitting tinnitus severity, types of hearing aids, uni- or bi- lateral fitting and average wearing time per day. Multiple regression analysis was used to find out the predictive variables of tinnitus improvement.
Result: There was a significant improvement between pre- and post hearing aids fitting on both VAS and THI tinnitus scores. The average improvement of VAS scores was 22.7. The average improvement of THI scores was 17.4. 81% VAS patients reported that hearing aids helped their tinnitus. 88% THI patients reported that hearing aids helped their tinnitus. VAS correlation factor was “average wearing time per day”. THI correlation factor was “pre-fitting tinnitus severity of THI scores”. The first predictive variable of VAS improvement was “<8 hours average wearing time per day”, the second was “gradually sloping audiogram”. The predictive variable of THI improvement was “flat audiogram”.
Conclusion: There is a positive effect of digital hearing aids fitting on relief of tinnitus in patients with hearing loss. About 80% patients with hearing loss got some relief of their tinnitus. The effect of tinnitus relief was related to average wearing time per day and pre-fitting tinnitus severity. The predictive variable of tinnitus relief was <8 hours average wearing time of hearing aids per day.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TW/099NTCN0714017 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Wu, Chi, 吳錡 |
| Contributors | Liu, Tien-Chen, 劉殿楨 |
| Source Sets | National Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations in Taiwan |
| Language | zh-TW |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | 學位論文 ; thesis |
| Format | 75 |
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